THE COHOS TREKKER

President's Message

Well, August is here and we are beginning to see more sun then rain. Let's hope that this trend continues.

Work is continuing to move along on the trail and land owner permissions are starting to come in.

MtnMagic, MtnGoat and I just spent 9 hours weedwacking the Lake Francis Trail. All but a very short section has been done. This last section is less than a quarter mile and is easily hiked. (The grasses are not too high!) We have also opened up the new Prospect Mountain Trail over to Lake View Estates.

Hikers are now completing the trail and so far the feed back has been mostly positive. There are some wet sections still due to the vast amount of rain we have been receiving.

PS We are still looking for people willing to help us open up new trails and knock down the grasses. Anyone interested, please get in touch with us.

See you on the Trail

Pete Castine
President
The Cohos Trail Association

THE COHOS TREKKER - by K. R. Nilsen

HELLO FROM THE COHOS TRAIL

WHAT"S NEW AFOOT

Put this on your calendar for a terrific day hike. The forward section of the new Prospect Mountain Trail is now open and ready for hikers. A fifteen minute hike gets you to the top of a low summit with a sensational view, almost as good as you get for two hours of work when climbing Mt. Crawford at the very start of the Cohos Trail. What to give this a try? Here's how you get there and here's what to expect once you do.

Travel north in New Hampshire on Route 3 all the way to the northernmost town in the state, the town of Pittsburg. From Vermont, you can take 102 to Canaan, then cross the Connecticut River to Route 3. From Maine, you could come up Route 26 to Colebrook and run north from there on Route 3. Once in Pittsburg, pass through the village and continue beyond Lake Francis (great view of the lake on your right). Three or four miles later reach a small cluster of businesses at Happy Corner. Just as you reach these businesses, look on your left for Danforth Road. Take that left and climb uphill. Level out and stay on the level for a good mile (ignoring lanes on your left) until the road appears to want to dead end at a home. On the left before the home is a sign at a steep driveway. The sign reads Prospect Mountain Woodworkers. Turn uphill on the steep pitch and run all the way until you reach a fork. Stay right at the fork and climb up to a home perched on a hill above. There is a good sized sign that states Home of the Cohos Trail Association. Park at the parking area just beyond the sign. This is the home of Pete and Lainie Castine, president and treasurer of the association, respectively. The Prospect Mountain Trail is signed and blazed and takes off directly from the parking area. The climb to the summit of low Prospect Mountain is about tent o fifteen minutes in length. The climb is never steep but easy to moderate most of the way. It is a woods trail most of the way and reaches a cleared summit that has a gravel surface on top.

Once you reach the summit, you are in for a wonderful surprise. Facing east, you look directly over 3,000 acre First Connecticut Lake. Some of the tallest peaks north of the White Mountains National Forest are in plain view, including Stub Hill, Diamond Ridge, Mt. Magalloway, Mt. Pisgah, Rump Mt. (most of it standing in Maine), and lesser peaks. To the north you can make out distant peaks straddling the international boundary, including Mt. Salmon, Mt. D'Urban, Mt. Kent, Saddle Mt. and others. Far to the east, some of Maine's tallest summits peak out of the horizon haze. And, finally, to the south, low summits in Pitsburg and Clarksville and Vermont's big Mt. Monadnock are visible.

This view is a stunner on a clear day, well worth the very short trek and pitch necessary to reach the visage.

Hopefully, in a few weeks, the remainder of the trail will be complete and folks could continue on another mile and a half or so all the way to Ramblewood Cabins and Campground. By the end of the season, we hope to be able to open a new trail out of Ramblewood all the way to Round Pond, via Covell Mountain, another terrific low summit with a similar view of the region.

Work on this trail was made possible with funds from grants from the American Hiking Society, the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund, and the Fields Pond Foundation.

HOW THINGS CHANGE

Substantial changes are underway in the interior of Coos County, the domain of the Cohos Trail. Here are some things to ponder. In a few years, thirty three wind turbines taller than a football field is long will rise above the ridgelines in central Coos. Most of the towers will occupy high elevation terrain on Owl Head, Kelsey Mountain and Dixville Peak. They will be visible from numerous points along the Cohos Trail and, in fact, the trail will run quite close to several of them on Dixville Peak. When staying at the Baldhead lean-to, many towers will be visible to the east and southeast. From vantage points on The Horn, the Percy Peaks and from Sugarloaf, their blades will be turning against the sky.

Also in a few years, the U.S. customs station at the border with Canada will undergo substantial changes. It will certainly be much larger and contain bays for vehicle inspection. Even Route 3 may be moved a short distance in the area to accommodate the new construction. Those reaching the border on the Cohos Trail and day hiking to Fourth Connecticut Lake will certainly see the changes.

No more do hikers see the smoke from stacks at papermills at locations on either side of the county. From various sites on the trail, hikers used to see smoke and vapor from mills at Berlin and Groveton. But those mills are gone. Even the big stacks in Berlin have been dropped to the ground by demolition explosives.

There is even talk of the development of a large, professionally appointed film studio, perhaps in the vast confines of the now largely vacant Ethan Allen furniture factory, and the launch of an eastern film festival with designs to rival Sundance in Montana. Imagine that. That would certainly change the face of northern Coos County. In fact, just recently, an advance film team was in Dixville to scout locations for the filming of a screenplay based on New Hampshire author Jeffrey Lent's bestselling novel, Lost Nation. Don't know about Lost Nation? Google the book or look it up on Amazon. If you love the North Country, you ought to get a hold of a copy. The novel is set in the Indian Stream Republic (Pittsburg) and the opening scenes include a trek through Dixville Notch when it was little more than a game path and native American trail.

SEA OF WEEDS

Record rainfall this summer is great if you are an amphibian, not so great if you are a trekker on the Cohos Trail, or many other trails, for that matter. Copious rainfall has fed the growth of a sea of grasses and weeds wherever the sun can get through to the forest floor. Folks have been out battling the green army, but the vegetative forces proved to be a formidable foe.

MtnMagic was out on the trail with a power weedwhacker and after four hours, he had to call it a day. Wore him out, those weeds did. I got an idea. Get a field guide to edible weeds of New England and go out and cut yourself a free salad every day. That might keep the weeds down.

DODGING DRY RIVER

Several hikers have reported not being able to cross Dry River because for most of the summer it has been raging with waters sweeping down Oakes Gulf on Mt. Washington. It made for a great show at Dry River Falls upriver, but it made for impossible crossings many days. Folks report staying high on the ridgeline between Isolation and Mt. Washington, swinging west toward Lake of the Clouds Hut and then turning south on the Crawford Path to keep moving toward northern Coos.

COHOS TRAIL BLOG

A young couple has put up a blog about their upcoming trek in early August. Go to cohoshike.com and have a look.

WHEN IS A TENT NOT A TENT?

A California company has devised a very simple, very inexpensive design for small structures that are really small buildings covered with tent material. These are fascinating things, roughly similar but more sophisticated than the youth camp buildings at Camp E-Toh-Anee in Stewartstown, just off the Cohos Trail.

Go to sweetwaterbungalows.com and see what they are doing out there in crumbling California. Then google Eide Eco-Tents and go to their photo gallery. They are up to something interesting, as well. Both manufacture semi-permanent buildings with doors and windows and pleasant interior spaces. Their exteriors are more reminiscent of homes than they are of tents.

These structures could make terrific trail buildings if adopted to create something like structural tent lean-tos, tent latrines, pavilions to get out of the rain, equipment sheds, and perhaps small bunkhouses or camps to accommodate trekkers and other recreational enthusiasts needing overnight respite.

The real drawback would be that the coverings would have to be replaced ever so often. But the initial cost of creating such structures, particularly in remote places, would be very low and, therefore, enticing to a trail organization such as The Cohos Trail Association.

FEE CHANGES IN THE WMNF

There are some fee changes that are scheduled to take place within the White Mountains National Forest. Those hiking on the CT may be affected to a degree by several items.

On the Old Cherry Mountain Road there are nearly a dozen dispursed camping sites. Apparently, there will be no need to have a pass (most often associated with folks arriving in vehicles) to utilize these sites any longer. They are being taken off the list of sites where fees apply.

On January 1, 2010, the Forest Service is thinking of imposing a $30 overnight fee for the use of the Mt. Cabot cabin at the 4,000 foot level on that peak in the Kilkenny backcountry. It is one of several remote cabins in the national forest that is being designated for a use fee.

THE LAST WORD

Economic development is the buzz word in rural America. All across the northern tier of the nation, traditional livelihoods are vanishing as once common industries such as papermaking, truck farming, dairying, and sawmill operations blink out quickly in this strange new economic wilderness.

Recreation will never be a sustaining force for rural populations, but can be one leg of a four-legged stool that must include small industry, communications, and agriculture, as well.

I have always maintained that in central and northern Coos County, nonmotorized recreation is a sorely underdeveloped entity, due in part to the fact that the tallest and most remarkable peaks in the White Mountains sit on the southern edge of Coos and they soak up a good deal of the interest in nonmotorized activity.

The Cohos Trail was created to some degree to tap that untapped vein, to bring hikers and other recreation buffs farther north, and, in fact, all the way to the Canadian border. All of Coos is a terrific environment. It should be experienced by more people.

As the Cohos Trail matures and its many miles are completed in 2011, it becomes increasingly apparent that this trail could be a critical resource for the county going forward. We of the association have to figure out how to make this long trail a "destination trail" not just a secondary path somewhere north of the White Mountains. We need to make it better and better, more accessible to more people. That means we should think of improving infrastructure along the entire system, from trailheads to sign kiosks, to camp sites, to lean-tos, to very rustic overnight huts or camps with simple bunking arrangements and perhaps a gas countertop burner to cook a can of stew over. We might think in terms of creating a Cohos Trail work-play vacation/camp for young people and adults who hike the trail but also work to maintain it. Numerous trail organizations elsewhere do that sort of thing.

We already partner with existing business in Coos County and help bring in a few dollars for inns, hotels and motels, B&Bs, and the like. We could do more of that. We could take advantage of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail that runs right through Stark (the Cohos Trail runs over the Upper Ammonoosuc River section of that watery trail at the Bell Hill Bridge in that town). There could be opportunities to spur trail-waterway activity from the Israel River in Jefferson to Second Connecticut Lake in Pittsburg.

Could local cooks provide packaged meals or cache supplies for thru-hikers? Who knows. Is there an opportunity for shuttle service? Of course.

Could the Cohos Trail attract bird watchers, moose watchers, mineral collectors, xc skiers, snowshoers, waterfall fanciers, and people looking for real, wild quiet and solitude? Sure it could.

In short, the Cohos Trail represents one avenue to the future for Coos County, one that doesn't require perpetual use of gasoline to drive the engine. The last I checked my own hiking activity in Coos County, I spent money for food for my pack, a restaurant meal or two, and money for a room so I could take as shower after long days on the trail (smelled bad, by god). I bought surveyor tape, a bottle of wine, socks, a compass (left mine home), and newspapers. I blew the fuel pump and paid a mechanic in Jefferson to fix the old rig. I was glad to do it. Walking home would have taken one hell of a long time.

Kim R. Nilsen, editor

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